Cosmic Multicultural Bucharest in the Pandemic (108):
Another Vision about “Miorita”
By Andrei Dorian Gheorghe (astro-photo-poem-essay) and Florin Alexandru Stancu (design)
“And a star fell
At my wedding party,
The sun and the moon
Carried my coronet (…)
And the stars were my torches…”
-from “Miorita”, the variant of Vasile Alecsandri, 1850-
“Miorita” (the Little Ewe) is the Romanian national myth-ballad, with hundreds of variants in the Balkan Peninsula. In the spirit of an ancient Geto-Dacian ritual, three shepherds from the three Romanian historical provinces meet to sacrifice the best of them to become the best herald for the supreme and solar god Zamolxis. And the chosen one compares his future death to a cosmic wedding.
Inspired by this myth-ballad, in 1936 architect Octav Doicescu and artist Milita Patracu made an artesian fountain in Northern Bucharest (called also “Miorita”) that should be considered a masterpiece of Romanian proto-astroart.
The eastern fresco has only pastoral aspects.
But the western fresco presents aspects of the cosmic wedding.
On my turn, in the autumn of 2020 (October 20 - November 1) I tried to continue the spirit of the Romanian national myth-ballad through an astro-photo-poem (including photos with the Sun, the Crowned Moon, Venus the Morning Star, and the most beautiful zone of the northern sky, Orion and the Winter Triangle).
So… here is my “Miorita and the Cosmic Wedding”:
The Chosen Shepherd and Miorita,
In sublime serenity,
Immortalized the heavenly bodies
In tender captivity!
#poetry